


Phantom Pains

by Aris



Series: Poetic Nonsense [5]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Tony Stark Has A Heart
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-19
Updated: 2013-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-05 05:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1089980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aris/pseuds/Aris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He's in love with a corpse, he knows.</p><p>Everyone knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Phantom Pains

When Tony drinks, and god, it's so often these days, it's like he's trying to suck something more than alcohol down his throat. Like he's gulping for something unattainable. He'll play the footage back, again and again, and he'll listen to those mixtapes, the ones full of ambiguous, rough voices calling out to him about dead boys in bathtubs and _'I'm glad I didn't die before I met you.'_ Which. Yeah. Tony understands that feeling. His hands itch for the feel of ribs, prominent and cold, against the palm of his hands, vibrating at the sound of that low, perfectly pitched voice, the one that echoed the lives of others in a heart stopping, horrifying way. Tony always hated that. Or loved it. Things like that blend together and blur in twirling, spinning circles. He barely knows anything by 5 o'clock in the evening, and he wishes that were strictly true.

Wishes he couldn't remember a thing.

When Tony drinks, and god, it's so often these days, it's not for pleasure. It's for the risk factor, the fact he _could_ die, _might_ die, and it makes him sick to the bone that he could want that. Crave it.

###### 

It's easy to forget the skyline of New York, and how it can so easily be the skyline of any other western city, if you're drunk enough. Tony always is. He stares out, watching fluffy clouds float by in a numb, dazed trance, wanting to feel bitter the sky is practically clear. He wanted thunder. He wanted rage.

It's seven am on the the seventeenth of April.

###### 

Tony could _drown, drown, drown_ in his tears, and it feels like he's filling up with them, brimming and sloshing them as he stares up at the ceiling. The white ceiling lights turn green, for a flash of a second, and his brow crumples in despair. It wasn't real, but green was the colour just three years ago. He wishes he could see it everyday, in the only form he ever loved it in. Wished he could look at it now without hearing dead promises.

JARVIS echos in the background, but he can't bring himself to care.

###### 

"Dr Banner is requesting entry, sir."

Tony's throat feels like the desert, and he reaches out for his clear paradise, the one wrapped in glass curves. He misses straight lines and pale skin and the paradise that came in that, the razor cut edges that Tony can only feel now at the breaking of melted sand.

"God, Tony."

Yeah.

Some God.

###### 

Bruce is paler than pale, like a washed up beach in a black and white filter, exposure on full. He's wearing purple, fuck, like the one four years ago. The original is torn into pieces. Tony knows. It's in a metal locker on the inside of his wardrobe, locked, bolted. Whatever. It's the last thing he touched before he -

"I know it's a stupid question," Bruce says, "But are you okay?"

Tony can't rip his eyes from the ceiling, from the spot he thought he saw green.

"Yeah,"

Bruce uncaps a beer and Tony ignores how he spills vodka over his shirt, drinking upside down. It prickles on his skin, leaking through the material, like his tears leak from his eyes, and it numbs. The skin prickles and burns and then turns to a void, a nothingness of feeling.

Tony wonders if it was the same for Loki.

The man next to him chokes on his drink, and Tony hopes he didn't say that out loud.

###### 

Sometimes Tony can close his eyes and see a smile, wicked, or soft, it never mattered, and it sends him to a graveyard. Every blink is a glimpse of death, of pain, of dull, lifeless bodies. He's in love with a corpse, he knows.

Everyone knows.

And when Thor drops by, and Bruce trails off, he's covered in blood. He doesn't't ask whose it is, doesn't acknowledge his presence. They crack like dams together, water tinged like salt raining and pouring through slashes and rips, sharp and abrupt like hipbones and smiles and those cunning, witty comments. Thor has a silent grief, an opposite to himself. It's deafening, unbearable, but Tony doesn't leave because he needs it. He clings to it, that despair, he clings and clings and clings because he - fuck, he's drowning in something that doesn't exist. An absence.

_"It - I can't describe it to you in words you could fathom. It was nothing and everything simultaneously. I - I fear it will drive me to madness once more, if I leave myself to the darkness for too long."_

Thor tells him, "Odin didn't even know,"

Gods live for thousands of years, and Tony thinks that' too long to mourn.

###### 

He wakes up with a headache and stares at the ceiling of their bedroom. His bedroom. He doesn't think about what that means. Above the coves, he stares at the space next to him. It's unmade, blankets rumbled and a small indent in the pillow.

It's been four years.

There's still traces of him left behind.

###### 

_"Not many things can kill a God, Anthony. Only that of which we were formed, and of which we are opposites of. Thor shall be swallowed by the earth, otherwise he will die at the hand of my son, Fenrir, when Ragnarök befalls us. "_

_"What could kill you?"_

Clint is shaking, shaking, like a palm leaf in a summer breeze except it's, uh, it's more like a hurricane. Red eyes - so familiar - and black shadows creeping under them, weaving and nasty, spitting stories of late nights. He doesn't drink, but he drops a familiar package into the palm of Tony's dry hand. It's green, _his_ green and it's not just vodka spilling onto his shirt now, as Clint falls onto the chair next to Tony's bed. Tony gives up one green for another, letting his eyes fully turn to pictures of diseased lungs.

Another thing that could never kill Loki.

"Anyone got a light?"

And Natasha is there, red lighter like her hair but it's still got that playful, innocent tone to it. That primary feel. It clashes with green - Christmas colours - and Tony pulls out a cigarette and lights it, remembering the flicker of emerald flames dancing upon impossibly cool skin. His cigarettes would always last so long, and Tony would get mad because it was cold outside, but could never bring himself to leave Loki out to smoke alone. 

He'd stay out all night for just a glance of those eyes.

###### 

Loki Laufeyson burned to death in a fire. Not fire from a dragon, fire from a volcano, fire from some all-powerful villain - no. Someone left the gas on in the apartment below his floor, and they made a spark. Loki's floor fell through in the explosion faster than one could blink.

It's a stupid way to die.

Tony tries not to think about it, tries to forget the ash on the hulks shoulder and the body in his arms. Loki had just gone in to get the rest of his stuff before he moved into Stark Tower. He'd been telling Tony on the way there that relying on magic was a bad habit that would end more trouble than it was worth and that no, he was not going to magic all his stuff into his bedroom. Tony had laughed and told him ' _You're on your own, reindeer games_ ' and waited in the car with Bruce. 

Five minutes later Loki was dead.

Tony tries not to think about it.

###### 

When Tony drinks, and god, it's so often these days, it's like he's trying to fill a hole in his being. He's a smudge, a tear in reality that no one can look at for too long lest they be sucked in, devoured, unravelled. Bruce is so pale, god, not a hint of green and he's holding Tony, hands under his arms, voice forced and light.

and, "How much longer, Bruce?"

He feels like he's standing in an empty room, staring through an empty window - waiting. Waiting. 

"Not much longer, if you keep this up,"

_"What could kill you?"_

_Loki face softens and his long hands lean upwards, smooth and firm, to touch gently at Tony's cheek, detailed pads brushing at high set bone "Fire, my love." he says, sugary sweet and deathly quiet, eyes flickering with something that could be regret, or love "I am of ice and frost, destined to perish at a flame's embrace." Tony tilts his head upwards, pressing his almost feverish forehead to Loki's own, searching for reassurance in a subtle sign on Loki's face - a twitch of a lip, a rise of a cheekbone, hell, a spark in his eye that could be something more than that heavy, heavy knowledge._

_He finds nothing._

**Author's Note:**

> More angsty stuff written at 3am, I know, I know - I have so many WIPs.
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://norsed.tumblr.com)


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